


An Old Tin Army, a Young James Dean

by feverbeats



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-24
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It feels as though processing is all he does these days. That and defending himself against claims that he shouldn't be carrying the shield, mostly coming from himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old Tin Army, a Young James Dean

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Mainsteam" by Thea Gilmore. There are parts of this that I wrote at the end of my freshman year of college, over four years ago. I just finished reading a bunch of Bucky-as-Captain-America comics, so I thought I should finally get it the hell off my hard drive.

Bucky pulls the white cotton shirt over his head. It smells clean. His arm smells of metal.

He walks fast, because that hurts less. His feet tap out the rhythm,  _James Buchanan Barnes_ , and the streets reek of summer, and Steve’s dead, he’s  _dead_ –

Bucky breathes in thunderstorm-thick air. The sky glows menacingly, dark and light all blurring together and hurting his eyes.

Bucky doesn’t know what to  _do_  with himself. He’s too hot, and his skin feels tight and dry.

He’s tired. He hasn’t slept in four days.

Bucky doesn’t believe in ghosts. That’s why this is so hard.

He feels vulnerable. He feels like something inside him is hanging just wrong.

He buries his hands in his pockets, pockets and should be full of ticket stubs and loose change. Instead, he keeps them empty. He hates the rustle of paper against his flesh fingers, the clink of coins against his metal ones.

He goes to an all-American diner and buys an all-American cheeseburger and a thick chocolate shake. He's not sure if he's trying for an homage to Steve or a sort of sick parody. He tells himself he has nothing to feel guilty about, but it's a little late for that. He drinks his shake and makes himself remember things, especially the ones that hurt almost too much to look at directly.

 _The great rush of excitement he felt when he saw Captain America in person for the first time._

 _The first time Cap kissed him—although, to be fair, Bucky started the kiss, that time and almost every other time._

 _The last time Cap kissed him._

 _The bright blue of both their uniforms stained red, and Cap shouting. His smile of relief when Bucky grinned and said, "Don't you worry about me, pal."_

 _The clean, hard clang of the shield against a helmet._

 _Cap's fingers digging into his hips; just the right amount of pressure against his skin._

Bucky has a whole timeline of noises in his head, from moans to gunfire, and all of them are somehow still too close, pressing against the inside of his skull. He sets down his shake. He has a headache, and this is really shitty penance.

He checks the cellphone that Fury gave him. It's still relatively new and confusing. There are five missed calls, probably all from Sam. Bucky will let it get to at least ten before he picks up the phone to call back. He flips the phone open and frowns. Wait. Not all five are from Sam. One is a number he doesn't know.

He shrugs and hits send.

"Tony Stark here."

Bucky nearly hangs up. Instead he just takes way too long to answer, feeling as though he's catching up to the world around him. "What do you want?" he says finally. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"Sure you are," Tony says, fucking excellent as always at knowing when Bucky is lying. "Glad you decided to take some time out of your schedule and call back. We need you on something."

Bucky sighs. He wanted a few hours off, at least, to process. It feels as though processing is all he does these days. That and defending himself against claims that he shouldn't be carrying the shield, mostly coming from himself.

"Fine," he says. "Brief me."

"I need to see you in person."

Bucky's willing to bet a hell of a lot that Tony doesn't need any such thing, but if Tony wants to pretend he can fuck with Bucky, fine. "Yeah, coming." He shuts the phone too hard.

By the time he gets to Tony's office, it's late enough that hardly anyone's around. The place is usually crawling, but not tonight. Maybe Tony's going to shoot Bucky in the face. Or the back.

"Bucky, hey," Tony says when Bucky slips into his office.

"I'm going by James now, you know," Bucky says. Even if Natalia is the only one who actually calls him that.

"And clearly not Cap." Tony crosses his arms over his chest, making himself look almost defensive. "Where's the costume?"

Bucky has it with him, but he's not wearing it. Some days he can stand to put it on and some he can't. Today is a  _can't_  day. He's working on minimizing those. "Brought it with me." He slings his bag onto the floor in front of Tony's desk. "So what's this mission?"

"Not exactly what I said." Tony uncrosses his arms. "It's less of a mission and more of a therapy session. It might not have occurred to Nick Fury that you need one, but anyone sane can see that—"

"And that's you?" Bucky snaps. "Look, I'll play nice, but I won't call you my boss and I won't call you  _sane_. And I don't need therapy." It's a stupid lie, but he isn't going to admit to Tony Stark that he hasn't slept in four days and the entire world feels hollow. The storm that's been brewing feels no closer to breaking, but Bucky can't see through the thick curtains on the window.

"Okay, so you don't. I'll make a note of it." Tony waves his pen as if to make a point, and it leaks ink on his hand. He sighs and throws it away. "Yeah, we're fucked. And you probably have PTSD. At least admit that much."

Bucky shuts his eyes and remembers Hershey's chocolate and bullets and snow.

On Bucky's old TV, the newsreels ticked by in grainy black and white, shooting images of Captain America across the public eye. Now the newsreels are in living color, and Bucky can't make himself watch them. Post-traumatic stress disorder. He remembers the words.

"I'll bet you can't even drink Coke anymore," Tony shoots at him.

Bucky is about to respond, but then he realizes that Tony is right.

Tony grins. "American's been ruined for you, kid."

Truthfully, though, Bucky thinks he's been ruined for America. This place doesn't want some broken-down, nationless ex-sidekick defending it. Then again, if they'd known Bucky's tune back in the war, they might not have wanted him then, either. He knew what the hell he was doing with knives and guns and men. He was a savvy kid. Now he's just tired, and probably more of an adult than Tony Stark.

And yeah, he's a mess and he has PTSD and he  _can't even drink Coke anymore._

"What I mean is, he's dead," Tony is saying, and Bucky tunes back in. "He's dead and I think maybe we should be fucking."

That doesn't make any damn sense, but Bucky doesn't live on Planet Stark. If that's really why Tony brought him here, it's a shitty, weird way of bringing it up. "I think my friends would kick your ass," Bucky says carefully.

"So, you and Sam . . ."

Bucky doesn't know how to say  _I don't respect him too much to inflict myself on him_  so it doesn't sound like  _I hate myself._

"No," he says.

"And Natasha?"

"Natalia. No. I mean, yeah." He forces himself not to blink or look away. "But it doesn’t matter. She's off doing her thing, I'm here doing mine." That's a complete truth, and he doesn't need to bring in the fact that she'd be nonetheless furious if he touched Tony Stark, of all people. Probably for all the wrong reasons, too.

Tony nods. "And Patriot—"

"There's something seriously wrong with you," Bucky snaps.

Tony just looks at him. "Well,  _yeah_."

Bucky runs a hand through his hair. "No, look, it's just . . . They all hate you. Because of Steve. And you know,  _everything_."

“He was a friend,” Tony says, and Bucky wants to kill him.

"Wait, okay, no, I—" Tony tries again. "He was—We were fucking."

Bucky waits.

"I almost," Tony says softly. He's not looking at Bucky. "I would have married him."

 _Before you started hunting him and his friends down like animals,_  Bucky almost says, but Tony looks like he's about to cry, and if he cries, Bucky really  _will_  kill him. So instead he says, "I'm not going to tell you everything  _I_  would have done with him, because I never got a chance to find out. But you look how I feel, and I didn't even do anything to him. So c'mere."

Tony blinks like he's surprised, and he looks even more surprised when Bucky kisses him instead of hits him.

So, Bucky's not surprised that Tony likes it on his hands and knees. And no, that's not a fair thought, but Tony is a bastard. Bucky's also not surprised that Tony digs the metal arm. He probably doesn’t even have any friends left who aren't at least part robot.

Maybe they're both trying to make up for something, but neither of them is very good at it. Bucky knows what this really is, though. This is two people who were in love with Steve trying to get some closure. Bucky doesn't want to admit that Tony loved him too (maybe more than Bucky, maybe in more important ways), because that feels horrible, but if he weren't admitting it, he wouldn't have his dick in Tony's ass.

Afterwards, Bucky pulls his t-shirt back over his head, smelling nothing but Tony's cologne. It's a nice smell, actually.

Tony puts his rumpled button-down shirt back on, but not his pants. He's too busy inspecting a deep red scrape along his hip. "You do more damage without your real arm," he says lightly. "Or at least the nails."

"Well, what can I say, I'm a killer," Bucky says. "Guess you know how that feels." He didn't intend to make this whole night come to a point, and certainly not to that one, but he's finding out that exhaustion leads to a stunning lack of sympathy. Besides, he wants everything in  _him_  to stop hurting.

Tony stares at him for a second. "Yeah," he says. "I do."

Except Tony can't crawl into someone else's skin to escape it. Bucky shrugs at him and grabs his bag. "Okay. I'll see you. Don't call me anymore."


End file.
